Deterioration
by androidilenya
Summary: The fall of Númenor: a soldier of the King in the Caves of the Forgotten, slowly losing his mind. Indirectly about how terrible the Valar are.


_ "Then Manwe upon the Mountain called upon Iluvatar, and for that time the Valar laid down their government of Arda. But Iluvatar showed forth his power, and he changed the fashion of the world... Ar-Pharazon the King and the mortal warriors that had set foot upon the land of Aman were buried under falling hills: __there it is said that they lie imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten, until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom."_  


~From the Akallabêth

* * *

_I'll come back,_ he had promised Ivorien, pressing his lips to her cheek. She had laughed at the touch of his new-grown beard on her skin, then offered his daughter up to him. He smiled and touched Ninil's dark curls with one finger, careful not to wake the sleeping babe.

_You'd _better_ come back - and soon,_ Ivorien replied, half-teasing to hide the dark worry in her eyes. She kissed him again, then pushed him towards the dock. He looked back one last time, then boarded the ship, boots clomping on the tilting wood.

The voyage was shorter that he had expected, but he spent most of it doubled over the railing - he had never been much of a sailor, to tell the truth.

They had laughed and joked as they set up camp on the glistening shores of the forbidden land, made noise for the sake of banishing the silence that seemed to watch them, that seemed to be waiting. Waiting for _what_, he didn't want to know, and so to hide his fear he laughed alongside the others, pretending he couldn't hear the wild edge to their banter, see the way they started at every noise.

_Maybe they're preparing us a welcome!_ one particularly brave man ventured, words too loud, eyes too wide. _Maybe we'll get a girl or two - a man long at sea has his appetites, y'know?_

It wasn't even all that funny, and he had never once in his life honestly wanted to be unfaithful to Ivorien, but he laughed with the others, passed the words along as though they were a talisman to ward off the silence - _maybe a girl or two, a man has his appetites - his _appetites_, you know._

The first rumble was inaudible and yet they all felt it, a dull rumbling that ran up through the soles of their boots, made the pearls on the sands dance (and he remembered staring dully at the winking movement in the sunlight, only able to think that Ivorien would love one of those, in a necklace maybe, or it could pay for a whole month's supply of food for their troop–)

And the darkness rose.

The world became a maelstrom of bodies and upheaving earth and falling stones, and he could hear the terror-filled screams all around him, his voice lifted, mingling with theirs, and all he could think of was Ivoriel's command - _you'd better come back_ - and he was going to die on these immortal shores. There was a wave of stone coming, cresting above his head, crashing down–

_Please let me live please please please–_

There was a splintering pain in his head, and the last of the light faded.

* * *

He woke with a pounding head to pitch darkness and his first thought was that it had been a nightmare, that fall into nothing, and here he was in his tent beside the others. This darkness was nothing more than the night, which he had not been afraid of since he was a little boy, and he should not be afraid of it now.

He sat up and his head struck stone.

A fresh wave of pain made him curl up, whimpering, and he realized for the first time that the ground beneath him was not the smooth, hard sand of the beach but a rough, uneven floor strewn with pebbles. He raised his hand to his aching temple and felt warm stickiness there, trickling into his hair.

_No..._

He fumbled around, hands seeking something familiar, and he felt only rock, above and below and around, crushing him, trapping him. Panic welled in him and he tried to stand again, forgetting in his blind terror that the ceiling was too low. He ended up doubled over, panting, back pressed against the stone as he strained to push the weight of the earth away. His palms slipped on the cool stone, a jagged outcropping tearing his skin and sending a rush of warmth down his wrist, but it did not move.

Alone in the darkness, he screamed, and there were not even echoes to answer him.

* * *

_Surely if I live, there is hope._

When he was calm enough to think coherently, he told himself such things. He had survived the fall, he could not have been the only one - and the entirety of the King's army could not be here, trapped, could they?

"Of course not," he told himself, speaking the words aloud to lend them truth, but they sounded subdued and unsure in the stuffy air. Unbidden, the image of rising darkness came to him, the land itself surging like a wave, solid rock prompted to fluid motion by some power beyond human understanding.

_There are no further powers. Nothing beyond us. It never made sense, it couldn't have been true._

Before they had set sail in violation of the Ban, there had been rumors attributed to those still faithful - whispers of the risks of incurring the wrath of the Valar. And he, who had never truly believed in any gods, not even the dark one brought from Middle-earth by the king's closest advisor - he had scoffed at these murmurs, heedless and uncaring, for there was nothing on earth or beyond it that could challenge the might and glory of the king of Númenor.

The fact that Ar-Pharazôn had a vast army of able-bodied men as well as an armada of warships hardly hurt, either.

No, he had not feared divine intervention, because even if the Valar had ever existed, they had no power anymore. All that had faded into the tales of older days, safe in the distant past.

_What, then, is this?_

He licked his cracked lips, putting that out of his mind, concentrating instead on the dryness of his mouth and the ache in his stomach. There was no way of knowing how many hours he had lost while unconscious, but his body was making it clear that he had missed more than one meal. If the others did not come and rescue him soon - but they would.

The silence around him was nearly unbearable. He found himself humming under his breath, whispering snatches of old songs, anything to keep away the press of utter stillness against his eardrums. Huddled against the rocks, arms wrapped around his knees, he tried not to imagine the sheer weight of the earth above him, pressing down.

* * *

In this utter blackness, the line between sleeping and waking was so blurred that he was afraid to think, for thinking would drift into fantasy, and fantasy to dreams, and dreams to terror.

_Do not sleep._

The silence played tricks on his mind, distant screams echoing in his ears, a tantalizing drip of water somewhere behind the rocks. He bruised his fingers frantically clawing at the walls around him, trying to reach that noise, only to have it cease.

_Do not sleep. Do not dream_.

His fingers bled, nails ripped by his mindless attacks at the stone about him - stone he was gradually realizing was his tomb. He found himself sucking on the ends of his fingers to taste the iron tang of his own blood, trying to work some moisture back into his paper-dry mouth, even though he knew it was useless.

_Do not sleep–_

He dreamt of fire pouring from the heavens like rain and jerked awake awash in sweat, mouth still dry. His tongue darted out past parched lips to taste bitter salt. He did not remember closing his eyes.

"Don't _sleep_," he hissed aloud, and the sound of his own voice startled him, but it felt better than the silence - even if every word hurt as it emerged, rasping out of his desiccated throat. (If he hadn't thought he knew better, he would have sworn that the air itself was sucking the water from him, suffocating him in it and leaving none within.)

_Speak. Say something. Anything._

_(Don't fall–)_

"I know," he told the darkness. "I won't fall asleep. I promise." But he had no more words, and he could feel something dark crouching behind him, sleep casting grasping tendrils about him, looping them tight.

"Ivorien?" he tried, opening his eyes wide against the blackness and pretending he could see her face, open and surprised - _fancy seeing you here, love, is something troubling you?_

_Come for me, save me - kill me, please–_

"Ivorien, I'm sorry. I don't think–" His voice cracked and he winced - couldn't he even face the truth now, face what he knew had to be true: if he was going to be rescued, it would have already happened.

"My head hurts," he told her, and it was true - there was a sharp pain threading through the base of his skull, waxing and waning in time to his heart. And his fingers still hurt, a syncopation of pain, pulsing back and forth, back and forth...

He slumped back against the rock, remembering the way he had watched the king's army sail east as a boy and watched it return in glory with a prisoner in chains, his own childish astonishment at the splendid armor and the clank of swords, the golden crown on the king's head - and going home and telling his father he wished the be among the king's men as soon as he was able, to fight and wear armor and return victorious. One child among many, eyes wide with wonder, and after that one recruit among many, fervent fire in his soul and strength coursing through him, channeled for the king's will and the good of the land.

He drew in a deep breath, let it out. "Ivorien, tell our daughter the king was wrong. Tell her there _are _powers here, the Valar are watching, and mortals can do naught to escape death."

_Tell her before it's too late._

He closed his eyes, slow heat seeping from under his eyelids and slipping over his cheek.

"Ivorien, I'm sorry. I miss you."

* * *

His voice faded to a cracked whisper as the hours (days? years?) passed. The pain in his stomach was a constant companion, like some little beast within him, gnawing at his insides, seeking an escape. He imagined the skin of his stomach tenting up, something scaly and spined bursting from underneath and clawing out with shreds of his flesh caught in its fangs.

Maybe there _was_ something inside of him, and maybe he would finally die when it broke loose.

_Why am I not dead yet?_

Ivorien hovered before him, smile wide and inviting, and every time he reached for her his fingers passed through empty air. She stretched out her hand and he lunged for it, bruising his hands on cold stone. One disappointed look and she turned, fading into the distance, leaving him to batter the unyielding rock with his fists and howl at the stifling air, unable to even weep anymore.

He should have died. Joined the countless dead in oblivion - somewhere.

(Somewhere, far away, a gull wheeled over a foaming patch of sea where once there was an island, then perched on a swollen body, bobbing on the waves, beak jabbing at the jeweled chain about its bloated throat.)

He tried counting as high as he could, a child's game to pass the time, though that seemed to perpetuate the idea that there _was_ time to pass, that this was more than unending torment, alone in the dark. The numbers blurred, countless streams of digits streaming through his head, nonsensical and meaningless, the ravings of a maniac.

(there is no time in hell.)

_...nine thousand four hundred twenty two... nine thousand four hundred twenty three..._

It came to him that he was being kept alive as a punishment, that his last desperate thought as he fell had been granted to him in a sort of twisted justice - _live, then, live forever with hunger and thirst and the lurking darkness, live with fear and terror and creeping insanity - _live.

He lost track of the spinning numbers and started over, counting each inhale, holding his breath between until his head spun, amplifying the spike being driven into the back of his head.

It had to have been days and days since he had fallen into here - why had he not died of thirst, died of hunger, died of loneliness?

_Please... I just want this to end..._

Somewhere, he thought he heard a laugh.

* * *

_Why am I alive?_

If this was a punishment, it was a fitting one - if the king had come to demand immortality, if he had sailed west to wrest it from the hands of the powers he no longer truly believed in, then granting him and all his men this was a fitting reward. They were immortal now, after all.

This was immortality: an eternity, alone, feeling your memories slip away, watching your thoughts pace circles about your head. He wondered if his body would begin to decay and his mind remain within a deteriorating shell, watching the slow process of his own conversion to nothingness.

Perhaps this was death - perhaps he was already dead. Did the mind stay with the body, after death? Was this the normal course of things, to be trapped in a disintegrating body, feeling the weight of eternity pressing down from above?

(Ashes to ashes, dust to dust - old words from old prayers, lip service under glittering windows. The king had not made his men devote their heart and soul to any religion, not even that of his new god, and he had never wished to return to his father's faith - the Valar, the gift of Men, the Undying Lands in the west. But the words still rose, though he had not heard them since he was a child.)

If this was a punishment, it was a fitting one - and it was a cruel one.

* * *

The darkness before him became a theatre, and he no longer knew if his eyes were opened or closed - for what did it matter, when he saw the same things no matter what his eyelids were doing? The only constant was the press of black behind the images that flitted across his vision, threatening to drown them in the inky depths, looming over him like a dark wave.

He saw the ocean rise up, a wave towering over the tip of the white-roofed temple, and a woman dressed all in blue climbing the steps, then stopping at the top to wait for the water to crash down on her. He saw Ivorien, face set in stony resolve, locking her door and setting the baby in the cradle, sitting beside her and singing a lullaby as the city burned about her, the window beside her glowing red.

_Baby's bed a silver moon, sailing o'er the sky..._

The window beside her shattered, pane splintering into a glittering rain of glass, scattering sparks across the floor. The fire burned across the street, consuming the Queen's garden, blackened petals of roses and lilacs floating away on an ashen wind.

_...sailing o'er the sea of sleep, while the stars float by..._

He saw the darkness coming, white foam rising high on the shoulders of an impossibly tall wave, a mountain of water. Ivorien did not move. He reached out to her, mouth shaping a desperate warning.

_...sail, baby, sail, far across the sea, only don't forget to come back again to me..._

The song died.

* * *

His arms hurt every time he moved them, as though the muscles within had atrophied from long disuse, falling away into nothingness as he sat in the darkness. His legs had long ago ceased to feel the sharp rocks beneath him, his back the ragged stone. The image of his home drowning in flame and darkness played before him, over and over, as though trying to tell him something.

Some days he thought it was a warning - _this is what could happen, this is what will happen. _Other days he knew it was only another part of his punishment. _This is what happened, this is what you caused to happen. The world is drowning, and you are drowning - one in water, the other in darkness._

_(Don't forget to come back,_ Ivorien told him, and his mouth was too tired to shape an apology.)

He tried to remember why it was he had wanted to come here, what blinding sunlight shining off armor looked like and why that had ever been something he desired.

_Ivorien, what did we name the baby? What is my daughter's name? Ivorien, I can't remember–_

He begged the darkness for death, and heard nothing in response, not even laughter.


End file.
